


Espiritus ex Machina

by Leonawriter



Category: Yu-Gi-Oh! 5D's
Genre: Alternate Universe - Ghosts, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-11-01
Updated: 2013-11-13
Packaged: 2017-12-31 03:10:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,635
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1026564
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Leonawriter/pseuds/Leonawriter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In another world, the baby in the capsule wasn't found fast enough, or something went wrong.  Yet, somehow, Yuusei still grew up with Jack and Crow, still lead the same 'life'... so to speak.  In fact, he almost didn't realise he wasn't even alive...</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Each attack, each damage-dealing card effect, left him out of breath, weaker and weaker.

How?  He'd never... never felt this way before. 

Rudger was laughing at him from the bridge, talking of destiny and fate, and Rua and Ruka were calling his name.

Uru was prepared for a direct attack, and Rudger took the shot - Yuusei'd had a face down, but it was countered, and now...

Now, he didn't even have a hundred lifepoints left.  Just fifty.  He felt himself growing weaker... weaker...

It was worse than when Uru had first been summoned, when, for no real reason he could think of, his Signer birthmark encapsulated him in the same glowing red light that Ruka had around her, Rua and Ushio.  Except that once the God was summoned, his own had died down, diminishing back to the birthmark itself, which was still glowing angrily.

"Mnhnhn... it's over, Yuusei!  Don't you see?!  Can't you see yourself?!  How can you hope to win in a state like that?"

He narrowed his eyes, not realising what Rudger meant, and assuming it only referred to the state of his lifepoints.

" _Yuusei!"_

_"Yuusei's... his life's only at fifty!  But- is this- what's going on?"  
_

_"I... I don't know..."  
_

He stood back up, determined to continue, no matter how bad things seemed to be.

"I've still got life yet!"

He didn't understand why Rudger was laughing at him, at first chuckling but then even more than that.  Why the others behind him trembled in fear for him.

_"H-hey, Ushio, d'you think... you don't think this is a weird side effect of these duels, right?"_

_"H-how should I know?!"  
_

He set his cards, summoning Zero Gardna in defense mode, and ended his turn.

"Hohh, still willing to fight, are you?  When you're barely able to keep that duel disk of yours on your arm?" 

What did that even mean?  It was still secure, he could feel it there, it wasn't about to fall off!

"You seem to get that persistent will from your father... then again, if you didn't have it, it looks like you wouldn't be here!  Hnhnhn... who would've guessed that seventeen years later, the very Signer that I am here to defeat would be Dr. Fudo's own son, kept on this earth only by the unfinished business of our fate... hnhnhn..."

"I don't recognise any fate between you and me!"

And nor did he understand all of the other references Rudger seemed to be dropping, asides and such that were aimed at him yet he was clueless about.

Or...

Was he?

Was he merely trying to ignore the fact that... that a part of him wasn't scared, wasn't surprised, the part that had him standing calmly in the face of it all, still able to fight?

"You can stop bluffing!"  What then, the question remained - what did _Rudger_ know?  "Your lifepoints are in peril!  It won't be long before your soul disappears into Momentum's light... back to where it should have gone seventeen years ago!"

_Back..._

_Back into... Momentum...  
_

_"YUUSEI!"_

_Of course... of course that's what's wrong... my arm... both of them, everywhere...  
_

With his lifepoints down so low in a fight against a Dark Signer, his life was going.

With no _body_ to sustain him, to take the damage for him, his very _spirit_ was being preyed upon. _  
_

_"Yu-  Yuusei...?"_

He was already dead... wasn't he?

Rudger 'allowed' him to get his hold on himself, telling a story of how things had all begun.  The bonds between him, his brother, Yuusei's own father... the work they'd done and how he'd allowed himself to be led astray.  All leading up to the present day-

Where the battle recommenced, a frantic struggle for the upper hand which Yuusei was determined to regain.

"Rudger!  Your fate doesn't concern me!  For me... it doesn't matter why I'm still here, or why I haven't moved on!" He heard the twins gasp from behind him, even Ushio taken aback by his casual acceptance of matters.  "If it weren't for my dad's research, the incident seventeen years ago could have been prevented!  The incident that took Jack, and Crow's parents... that threw all of our lives out of whack!  If that hadn't happened... we might have had our families with us, and been _alive_ for it!"

'Ghosts' couldn't cry.  They were what they were, with no adding or taking from that stasis of non-life.

But Yuusei had never much believed in that.  _Failure to thrive,_ they'd tried to label him. _Some kind of radiation, maybe, got inside the capsule, poor thing._   Different theories. _I wonder whose he was?_

He almost remembered, even now.  He'd just had to need to. 

Despite all that, how... how could he not thrive, how could he not go on?

"Despite all that... how?   How are they still able to call me their friend?  To smile at me without asking?"  Even when he did something that should have brought questions.  "What should I do?  How should I make it up to them?  How, when if people hadn't tried to look after me, maybe someone else might not have died?!"

Efforts wasted on a child that would 'grow' healthily, based on what it saw and who it was with and the memories it retained.  Wasted, when they could have been given to another.

He could have been gently told that he was no use here any more, he'd been a child, what hope could he have, what reason could he have for staying, but they'd kept him around and hadn't abandoned him, not even at... not even at the strangest things that he must have done.

"Answer me!  _Answer_ me _, Rudger!"_

There was silence, that greeted him, for several long seconds.

Seconds in which the twins behind weren't sure what to be more afraid of, that they were remembering ghost stories told in the dark of night, or the spider willing to eat them soul first hanging from the ceiling, in which the police officer merely wanted to run, and run far away, but knew that he could not, and his duty to keep the kids safe overrode any self-preservation he wished was stronger, in which...

Crow, from the lower balconies, had heard everything, and felt physically ill from it.

How?  How could he have never known, never picked up the signs?

As Rudger asked if that was the darkness in Yuusei's heart, Crow's resolve snapped, and he realised - it didn't matter what Yuusei was, or how he'd come to still be around as Crow and Jack were growing up.

What mattered was that he _was_ there.

Everything else could wait, and he was sure it'd hit like a ton of bricks when it did, but for now, he just didn't have the damn time to worry about it.

And he was going to tell them _all_ exactly how he felt.

...

AN: I plan to do at least a few more definite ficlets based in this AU, partly because it's such an interesting one to come up with ideas for.


	2. Breathe

_Breathe._

It sounded easy.  In.  Out.  Diaphram expands, air pulled in, air goes out...

He knew the science of it.  The logic was easy.  Pure, plain, simple.  It was supposed to happen without thought.  An automated movement of the body...

 _Breathe_.

Then why, now, was he having to remind himself to breathe?

When he was speaking.  Whenever he wasn't.  As he found the others out of breath.

_Breathe._

Was it, maybe, because now that he remembered that he wasn't actually alive, his body was realising that it didn't have to do such unnecessary things?  If that was the case, then had his heart stopped beating, too?

He wondered.  He heard the rushing of blood in his ears, and he wondered - _is this true, or is it just my imagination, something to tell me that I'm still 'alive'?_.

_Breathe._

Did it even matter?  Did it matter that his entire existance was possibly all in his mind?  A fabrication created only by himself, and with contributions from those around him.

A dream built upon by a baby's wish...

_Breathe.  In, out, in, out.  He shouldn't have to remind himself how.  In..._

_Out...  
_

They noticed.  He was sure they noticed.  Or they would, in time.

A figure had appeared in the distance, while he was down there - tall, taller than he was, and he wondered if he'd keep growing now that he _knew_ \- and the man had struck a cord with his oldest, most alive memories.

_"This isn't your time, Yuusei.  I never planned for you to die that young, but you're here still somehow, and I saved you from sharing my fate.  Now - go.  Go, before all of that is undone.  You might be a spirit, but you're alive!  You're alive with every bond that you make that binds another's heart to yours.  With every person who finds you important to them.  Go._

_And live."  
_

So that was what being 'alive' meant.

He thought he heard voices, as his father faded back into the depths of Momentum and he floated, weightless as any of the other spirits, back to the surface and the real world.  Voices he knew, voices calling for him.

 _Breathe_.

He gasped, like a drowning man tasting the air for the first time in minutes.

He felt new again, remade, shaking like a leaf with each rung of the ladder from the first time his hands found one.

_Breathe.  In.  Out.  Simple as that._

They pulled him up the rest of the way, and he forced himself to regain his composure.

He'd never put much stock in ghost stories, as a kid.  Maybe now he knew why.  But he'd never expected to find that the one out of all of them that would scare him, would have himself as the ghost.


End file.
